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Partner Institutions and Teams

The ICAA’s partners in the Documents Project initiative include documentation centers, research-oriented museums, foundations, and private collections throughout Latin America and the United States. The participating centers provide office space and equipment, staff time to oversee researchers, assistance in locating artists and/or documents, photo duplication, scanning, and/or digital reproduction materials. A list of these centers is included below.

ARGENTINA

Fundación Espigas, Buenos Aires

Fundación Espigas is a private nonprofit institution dedicated to the research, preservation, and documentation of the visual arts in Argentina. Since its creation in 1993, Fundación Espigas has organized an impressive collection of primary bibliographic resources in the field, in addition to a documents database. Because of its achievements in the preservation, documentation, and dissemination of information, Fundación Espigas was named an Organization of National Interest by the General Secretariat of the Argentine Presidency in 1996, and subsequently the country’s Ministry of Culture declared it a Cultural Interest Organization. The foundation’s holdings include exhibition catalogues, monographs, reference sources, and auction catalogs. These bibliographic materials are accessed through a database that has become Argentina’s most important resource for research in the visual arts field.

Team

Patricia M. Artundo, Ph.D., Team Coordinator

Marina Barón Supervielle, Administrator

Roberto Amigo, Researcher

Sofía Frigerio, Researcher

Ana Longoni, Consulting Researcher

Victoria Lopresto, Researcher

Virginia Piccini, Researcher

Natalia Pineau, Researcher

Cristina Rossi, Ph.D., Researcher

Candelaria Artundo, Administrative Assistant

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BRAZIL

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP), the foundation of the State of São Paulo, is one of Brazil´s most important grant-making government agencies for research in the sciences, technology, and the humanities. Linked to the country’s Secretariat for Science, Technology, Economic Development, and Tourism, FAPESP has been granting funds and scholarships in all areas of knowledge since 1962. It also finances other activities in support of investigation, educational and cultural interchange, and the popularization of science and technology in the State of São Paulo.

As one of Brazil’s leading research organizations, FAPESP, through its collaboration with the partner team, will ensure the inclusion of a considerable number of documents and texts regarding the production, interpretation, and display of twentieth-century Brazilian visual arts. The dissemination of these materials among scholarly audiences in Latin America and the United States will encourage a far greater number of comparative histories, as well as assist in updating educational and art-history curricula to reflect the diverse cultural enclaves that enclose the Americas.

In addition to generous support from FAPESP, the University of São Paulo provides office space in a beautifully restored Art Nouveau palace that is part of its School of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU/USP).

CHILE

Active since 1999, the Seminario was founded by the research team for the exhibition CHILE, 100 Years of Visual Arts, curated by Justo Pastor Mellado and organized by the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago. The Seminario’s members, who belong to various academic disciplines, initially focused on Chilean art production between 1973 and 2000. Later, they expanded their framework to include the periods 1920–1930 as well as 1950–1960 so as to delve into the theoretical problems of historic reconstruction. During their initial meetings, the team members identified critical contributions to Chilean contemporary art through the examination of earlier decades of the twentieth century. This was an overlooked aspect of Chilean art history that proved to be relevant for the development of a new area of scholarship. The Seminario is now working on a compilation of artists’ texts and manifestos as a means of reconstituting the history of Chilean Conceptualism. The Seminario will connect and interface with the website “Textos de Arte en Chile,” an ongoing web-based visual arts documents archive.

Team

Alberto Madrid Letelier, Ph.D., Team Coordinator

José de Nordenflycht, Researcher

Paula Honorato Crespo, Researcher (2005–2006)

Luz Muñoz Rebolledo, Researcher and Librarian

Patricio Muñoz Zárate, Researcher

Paulina Varas Alarcón, Researcher

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COLOMBIA

Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá

The Universidad de los Andes is a private institution offering twenty-eight undergraduate and sixty-one graduate degree programs. It is renowned for its support of scholarly research in several fields, including history and theory of modern and contemporary art. Its research initiative is conducted through Colciencias, an entity that specializes in Colombian and Latin American visual arts. The initiative includes a publications program and sponsorship of the annual Premio Nacional de Crítica [Annual Award for Criticism].

MEXICO

CURARE, Espacio crítico para las artes, Mexico City

CURARE, Espacio crítico para las artes, was founded in 1991 by a group of critics and art historians based in Mexico City. It is a nonprofit organization, primarily dedicated to the research and analysis of visual culture within a multidisciplinary context. CURARE offers research services, discussion groups, workshops, and specialized seminars. It also organizes guided tours, led by expert historians and critics, to different art sites (including mural programs) and private collections in Mexico.

In October 1991, CURARE published its first quarterly bulletin, which has since evolved into the most important journal for the dissemination of art-historical research and contemporary visual culture in Mexico. Additionally, the organization maintains a contemporary art data bank that has increased tremendously since its establishment fifteen years ago. This data bank is the result of individual contributions from artists, of ongoing research, and of research related to the organization’s various curatorial projects. Each file includes a biography of the artist, exhibitions, photographs, catalogues, artists’ statements, slides, clippings, critics, videos, and more.

PERU

Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI), Lima

Housed in a neo-Renaissance palace built between 1870 and 1871, the museum is devoted to preserving and exhibiting its historic collection of Peruvian art, which comprises objects dating from pre-Columbian times to the contemporary period and also features temporary exhibitions of contemporary art. The museum’s library and archives of Peruvian art comprise one of the largest art documentation centers in Peru, containing 5,000 volumes of original artists’ writings and rare manuscripts as well as 10,000 images related to Peruvian art.

Team

Natalia Majluf, Team Administrator

Gustavo Buntinx, Team Coordinator (2008-2010)

Luis Eduardo Wuffarden, Research Consultant and Team Coordinator (2011)

Daniel Contreras Medina, Researcher

Gabriela Germaná, Researcher

Ricardo Kusunoki, Researcher

Jesús Varillas Cuevas, MALI Librarian

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UNITED STATES

Chicano Studies Research Center, UCLA, Los Angeles, California

UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC) was founded in 1969 with a commitment to foster multidisciplinary research efforts in keeping with the University of California’s community-centered mission. The CSRC serves the entire campus and supports faculty and students in the social sciences, life sciences, humanities, and the professional schools. Its research addresses the growing Chicano and Latino population, which now constitutes nearly one-third of California and one-half of Los Angeles, but continues to have disproportionately low access to higher education. The CSRC also forms part of the Inter-University Program for Latino Research (IUPLR), a consortium of eighteen Latino research centers located at major U.S. higher-education institutions in the United States. The CSRC houses a library and special collections archive, an academic press, research projects, community-based partnerships, two competitive grant/fellowship programs, and the Los Tigres del Norte Fund. Since the 1970s, the CSRC has held six faculty positions that are placed on loan to other departments, thereby enabling the Center to increase its research capacity and to serve as a vital force for diversifying the curriculum and the faculty across the UCLA campus.

Yasmin Ramírez, Ph.D., Consultant/Researcher, Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College, New York City, New York

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Institute for Latino Studies, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana

The Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame promotes understanding and appreciation of the social, cultural, and religious life of U.S. Latinos through advancing research, expanding knowledge, and strengthening community. It plays a pivotal role in providing an academic environment at Notre Dame that furthers knowledge and understanding of the Latino experience in the United States. Founded in 1999 on the outstanding intellectual tradition in Latino studies that was established at the university by Julián Samora (professor in the Department of Sociology, 1959–1985), the institute seeks to enhance interdisciplinary study and research in Latino studies as a vital component of the university’s academic mission. While the institute has distinguished itself in the social sciences since its founding, it has increased its national profile in the arts with initiatives that include the 2004 establishment of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, a first-book prize for Latino poets; and an award from the National Endowment for the Arts for the multidisciplinary proposal “Poetas y Pintores,” a research and exhibition project in full partnership with the Center for Women’s Inter-Cultural Leadership at Saint Mary’s College. The Institute is also the headquarters for the Inter-University Program for Latino Research (IUPLR), a consortium of eighteen institutions that brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines to conduct policy-relevant research on Latinos.

Team

Gilberto Cárdenas, Ph.D., Team Supervisor

Tracy Grimm, Coordinator and Archivist

Olga Herrera, Research Associate

Victor A. Sorell, Lead Consultant

Gabrielle Toth, Research Assistant

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URUGUAY

Museo de Bellas Artes Juan Manuel Blanes, Montevideo

The Museo de Bellas Artes Juan Manuel Blanes operates under the auspices of the city of Montevideo’s Department of Culture. The museum’s cultural and political purpose was clear from the outset. Founded in 1930 on the occasion of the centennial of Uruguay’s independence, the museum formed part of an effort to strengthen the city government. It is named after a painter who, on the hundredth anniversary of the nation, would help create Uruguay’s iconography. As the institution grew, its initial conception—which revolved around its building, as well as a model of museum and of collection characteristic of the 19th century—underwent modification. Starting in 1940 and at the insistence of the museum’s director—painter César Pesce Castro—the institution began to receive works awarded at the Salón Municipal. In the fifties, it also began accepting works of contemporary art. In the framework of the current international crisis on the role of museums and their collections, the institution is committed to reconstructing its identity; it is more concerned with “re-signifying and problematizing” its collections than with incrementing them. It attempts to be accessible to the work of artists currently active and to perform a cultural service on both national and regional levels as a site of living culture.

Team

Gabriel Peluffo Linari, Coordinator

María Eugenia Grau, Researcher

Marina García López, Researcher

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VENEZUELA

Fundación Mercantil, Caracas

As one of the leading financial conglomerates in Venezuela, Banco Mercantil has a solid tradition of community and cultural involvement. Since its establishment more than eighty years ago, its foundation has consistently developed programs that transcend its core financial activities, investing heavily in the welfare of the communities it serves.

Programming support for projects in education, health, culture, religion, and sports is administered through its charitable foundation. Additionally, the foundation has one of the best collections of Venezuelan art in the world. Through the creation of a corporate collection, the foundation actively acquires and exhibits works from the colonial period, the nineteenth century, and the modern and contemporary period in an effort to put forth a vision of creative and intellectual coherence within the context of Latin American art history. Additionally, through this endeavor the bank is ensuring that the country’s artistic patrimony is preserved for the enjoyment of future generations of Venezuelans.